Stan K-B: [...] Discussing the bizarre mix of Kirk sermonizing, heavy drinking and lusty
couplings, there’s a quote from Burns’s famous “The Holy Fair”: [...]An’ monie
jobs that day begin, /May end in HOUGHMAGANDIE,/Some ither day ( houghmagandie
as fornication)[...] This and similar poems were surely known to many “down
south” including VN’s Cambridge literary circles? [...]In other words, we need
not confine VN’s sources of Lowlands dialect to his Scots tutor. [...] does
her (PM) confusion over Angus and Hugh MacDiarmid dilute her conclusions
&/or falsify her methodology? [...]
Tom Rymour: So
houghmagandie was there in plain view all the time in "The Holy Fair"! That was
NOT one of the poems spoon-fed to me as a wee boy in Mauchline by the
Presbyterian successors of the clerics who denounced Mr Burns in public for what
he called: "Just plain forni..."[...] In my day the church fete was a staid
affair, alas.
MR: I
don't think the McDiarmid flaw invalidates her larger point[...] For myself, I
feel mostly unconcerned with the level of intention we can assign to each
particular insight. Priscilla's book is immensely helpful to me for what it
reveals about VN's source material (written without the help of the
internet!)[...] I feel the same way about Boyd's monograph [...]In fact, I'm
perfectly at ease accepting Boyd and Meyer simultaneously (though I don't share
their their level of certainty).
JM: I agree with MR in relation
to books written about VN, his life and his work: it's
impossible to fully ascertain most "authorial intentions" ( should they've
been deliberate, or not!) or what preyed on VN's mind even when he,
himself, chose to speak about them.
This is actually independent from "critical
ecumenism," for we have no proffered Bible, but a playful
competent author who expects from each one of us that
we make up our minds or provide our
own interpretations.I may be wrong ( I'm used to
it, now), but I think it is also part
of VN's game to have us imagine what kind of reader, in
his eyes, would interpret Pale
Fire as having been written by one or by more different
authors or who would understand this instead of that,
aso. A game-distancing effect?
I think PF's openness for varying
and divergent interpretations may be one of the
jokes VN directed at
us.